The Office à la Georges Seurat’s ‘Sunday Afternoon’

Q&A with photographer Chris Haston

I’ve gotten to know NBC photographer Chris Haston over the years, and was happy that he agreed to answer a few questions about this beautiful new graphic of The Office!

tanster: How long did it take for you to shoot? How many separate sessions did it take? I assume you shot John/Jenna together, Angela/Kate together, etc?

Chris: I prelit the day before with my good friend Dave Bjerke. It took us about four hours to get it ready for the cast to walk in. I shot everyone individually with the exception of Jim and Pam. It made sense to shoot them together.

tanster: Did you shoot in an actual park? Or was it all done with prop backgrounds/Photoshop?

Chris: We actually shot on Stage 3 at the Dunder Mifflin stages. It is the area where we shot the hospital where Jim and Pam had their baby. Production built a “grassy knoll” and we shot on a neutral background.

tanster: Did you do the Photoshopping as well?

Chris: I did not do the post work on this. I left it up to people who know what they are doing. Sean Serio from NBC “Off Air” was the designer and art director.

tanster: Whose idea was it originally to re-interpret the Seurat painting?

Chris: It was Sean’s idea. He was the designer.

tanster: Anything else you can tell us about how this image was created?

Chris: This was a blast to shoot. Every cast member of The Office is amazing. They follow direction well, they trusted me with my vision and we had an amazing day and shoot. John Lavet was my photo producer and Don Wallschlaeger was my prop guy.

Think about it folks, the NBC photographer who took the individual shots probably did not know what is going to happen boss-wise. Even if they did know, they would be aware that it shouldn’t affect the graphic.

it looks so awesome (:
as far as i can see, that’s the cast we have right now? so, maybe that means that either one of them does become the boss, or the boss will be pretty unimportant to the ensemble that they’re not really part of the main cast.